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Unfortunately, he has a hoarder's mentality, and his current Powerbook G4's (running 10.4.something; the latest version in the 10.4 OS) iPhoto was stuffed full of photos.

A few days ago, he tried to upload some more, but from what he told me, the iPhoto's memory capacity had topped out and wouldn't accept anymore photos. Now, I don't know what he tried to do, but now iPhoto will either crash upon activation, or just load indefinitely (the rainbow spiral just keeps on twirling, and the photos themselves never load).

So, questions are:

1. Is there any way to delete that cache of photos in iPhoto without actually opening the program?

Or, if that isn't possible:

2. How would I go about installing a "clean" copy of iPhoto?

(I'm a germaphobe, and he's threatening to have to use my Macbook tomorrow in place of his if the issue can't be resolved.

May not seem like much, but my germaphobia is serious, and if my dad ends up using mine (he has next to no sense of hygiene), I will seriously have a panic attack. This is why it's urgent!

Sorry, I know that the tone here is coming off as very demanding, but I am feeling very real dread right now.)

It's really hard to know what actually happened there, but it sounds like he filled up the hard drive (this would be a bad thing).

To answer your questions, yes it is possible to delete photos without opening iPhoto, but STRONGLY NOT RECOMMENDED. Instead, simply COPY the existing iPhoto Library (which you will find under the "Pictures" folder in his home folder to an external drive with lots of space, then delete the iPhoto Library on the main drive, then open iPhoto and it will create a new, blank library. To re-load the hopefully-now-happy original iPhoto library, simply quit iPhoto and launch it again, this time holding the Option key down. You'll be asked to locate (or create) a library, and this time point it to the "original" one on the external drive. If this still causes problems then the library might be corrupt (we'll get to that in a minute), but it might just open up correctly now that it has room if disk space was indeed the issue.

As you can tell from the above answer, your question #2 is moot.

If the "original" iPhoto library still won't open properly, try re-launching iPhoto and holding down BOTH the command and option keys. This should produce a menu of checkboxes to help fix the library. Do them all if you have the time.

PS. If he's not making regular backups of his photos using Time Machine or some other method, he's BEGGING for lost data. Get that set up for him.